


7 Short Blocks

by Julibean19



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Addiction, Dark, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Dubious Consent, Dubious Ethics, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Infidelity, M/M, Mental Instability, Obsessive Behavior, Stalking, Suicidal Thoughts, Unhealthy Relationships, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-08
Updated: 2018-08-08
Packaged: 2019-06-23 20:17:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,806
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15614196
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Julibean19/pseuds/Julibean19
Summary: Jack counts.He doesn’t know what else to do, so he counts.  Every mile, every minute, every step, every breath.  He knows how many blocks it is to Bitty’s house from every possible place in Boston.Everywhere Jack goes, he counts.





	7 Short Blocks

**Author's Note:**

> Cross posting this little thing from Tumblr for y'all. This is my attempt to get a little angst out of my system. My current mood is not conducive to the future healthiness and happiness of You’re My Amen right now and that should be a much happier fic than this one.
> 
> Shout out to my love, @denaceleste for the quick beta read and disturbing glance into my psyche.

Jack counts.  

He doesn’t know what else to do, so he counts.  Every mile, every minute, every step, every breath.  He knows how many blocks it is to Bitty’s house from every possible place in Boston.  

Everywhere Jack goes, he counts.

There’s only one thing that could keep Jack from counting, and he lost any right to having it long ago.  He pushed and he shoved, with palms and hips and cheap words over tinny cell phone lines, and he lost.  What Jack needs doesn’t belong to him anymore.

It’s 4.3 miles from his front door to Bitty’s.  It’s 7 short blocks from the south exit of the park.  It’s 19 minutes from the rink by car, 22 if you get caught behind the bus.  It’s 3.7 miles to the Whole Foods that carries the kind of pastry flour that Bitty prefers.  

It’s exactly 2,890 measured breaths from the waterfront where the mother duck is nesting with her 22 children.  There were 23 once, but even though Jack counts every day as he lines up his shot, his camera can’t seem to find the last.  

Sometimes he lies awake at night imagining how it died.  Sometimes he wishes it were him.

Every night when he finishes running the trail by the river, he tells himself not to go.  But it’s just 7 short blocks.  It would only take him 10 minutes and 12 seconds at his regular jogging pace, 8 minutes and 56 seconds if he cut through the school parking lot and if the neighbor’s fence is left open.

Every night Jack loses that argument with himself.  He’s not an idiot, but he’s always been an addict.

Jack knows Bitty is seeing someone, a doctor who works at the Children’s Hospital.  He knows this because he’s counted the number of times Bitty has been photographed on the man’s arm at benefits and award dinners.  Seven in the last four months alone.  His mother always wanted him to keep up with local philanthropy efforts, but probably never imagined it would be like this.

It’s been eighteen months since Jack was traded to the Bruins, and it was on day 284 that the doctor proposed.  

When Jack zooms in far enough with his longest camera lens, he can see a ring looped around a chain on Bitty’s neck while he kneads dough.  If Jack goes early enough in the morning before the city is awake, there’s no one there to see him count the diamonds.  There’s no one to tell him not to look at life through layers of glass.

Maybe he’s happy but maybe he’s not.  

Bitty’s fiancé looks serviceable, all smiles when there are children to treat, not with lollipops but with scalpels.  He’s handsome, but he’s not the right kind of handsome.  There’s blond hair where there should be brown, green eyes where there should be blue.  There’s only enough muscle to lift Bitty over one shoulder and throw him on the bed, not enough to sweep him off his feet and hold him against the wall—not nearly enough to pound into him after a hard win in overtime.  

There’s not enough passion there, not enough stamina to keep thrusting when the acid burns deep and the blood pounds hard enough to dance and throb under pale Canadian skin.  There aren’t enough squats in the world.

Maybe Bitty’s fiancé is a horrible person, an abuser.  

That’s what Jack tells himself.  That’s number one on Jack’s list of things that would make it okay for him to wait outside and watch them through their bedroom window—and he needs a reason.  It could be any reason, but there needs to be at least one.  That would make okay.  If just one thing on his list were true, then he wouldn’t be crazy.  He wouldn’t need therapy and pills and those cuffs around his wrists again.  

Padded doesn’t mean soft.  

Safety razors still cut if you try hard enough and Jack has never known when to stop.

Maybe one day Bitty will come outside and see him hiding beyond the back fence and he won’t have to hide his smile.  One day he won’t have to feign anger or resignation.  He won’t have to play off his aroused shudders for quivers of fear.  Because the truth is, Bitty has always been able to see right through Jack.

Eric Bittle doesn’t need a lens or a shadow.  Those were always Jack’s weapons of choice.

It’s a game that they play, one without a winner.  The rules are simple.  Pretend you don’t know how badly you need to keep playing.  Pretend you don’t know why you’re playing at all.  Pretend you can’t remember why you started playing in the first place or why even after two years of college, three years of Skyping and missed calls, and eighteen months of counting steps the rules haven’t changed.

Pretend.

Bitty loves the game, but only in secret.  He loves it so much he can’t let Jack know they’re playing.  If the denial isn’t deliberate, it stops being fun.  If you ask to play, you’ve already lost.  If Bitty lets Jack in the back gate, the game ends—and they know how it would end, with biting nails and jackrabbit thrusts and whispered endearments that sound more like profanities than prayers.

He has to keep Jack outside the fence so he can have this.  But what is it?  What do they pretend for?  What do they fight to preserve?

It’s the sick thrill of constantly looking over your shoulder.  It’s the fluttering of lashes, the coy smile and tilted hips that tell Jack his subject knows when there’s a camera on him.  It’s the little nibble of a lower lip that wishes it were there all the time.  The fever dream of performing a striptease with your headphones in, because there’s no one else there to hear the music.  The hope that your favorite viewer has tuned into the right channel.

Bitty needs Jack’s obsession, craves it like a salt lick, carries it wherever he goes.  But they both know that’s all it is.  The yearning is what bites as sharp as eager teeth on forbidden skin.  The denial is what sustains.

He can’t leave his fiancé.  He’s said as much 37 times, 38 if you count that one that turned into a moan halfway through.  Bitty can’t let Jack in—can’t even open the back gate.  He can’t let it become something that it isn’t.  

If you swallow a flame, does it still burn?

So Bitty gives Jack half a kiss, a sideways thing shared over a three-foot brown picket that tells him he has to stop coming over like this.  It’s an aborted thing that thinks better of itself halfway toward its destination, a false vow, a promise that’s already been broken 173 times.   

It’s whispers and lies.  Bitty won’t leave him.  He’s in love and planning a summer wedding.  Jack can’t come over anymore because Bitty can’t sleep knowing this is waiting outside—can’t sleep at all because he always knows.

Jack smirks to himself because he knows too.  

He knows that every time Bitty gets fucked by the flimsy blond, he’s imagining it’s Jack.  He knows that every time he stands up to draw the blinds, naked save for a tiny pair of hip huggers, he’s showing off his curves for Jack.  He knows that every time Bitty bakes something maple flavored, it’s only to draw Jack in with the scent.  

Bitty does all of these things so they can have this.  This clandestine affair.  This secret that keeps both of them alive.  This ache that ebbs and flows like blood—this digging sensation that gnaws at Jack’s stomach every time he counts the steps to Bitty’s house.  

Bitty can’t let Jack in.  He can’t give Jack a kiss full on the lips, because once he does, it’s only 26 steps to the picnic table, only three inches of inseam that keeps Jack’s fingers away from the place that doesn’t belong to him.  It’s eight feet of siding up to the window.  Only three feet beyond that to the bed where the man that isn’t Jack sleeps.  

They’re only one full kiss away from Bitty melting into Jack’s arms and sliding a hand into the back of Jack’s running pants.  If they made it the 26 steps to the picnic table, if Jack were to lay Bitty out and run his tongue over all five feet, six and a half inches of his favorite subject, then Jack would know what it feels like to finally win something that his father hasn’t.  

Jack knows for a fact that there are more diamonds on the gaudy thing around Bitty’s neck than on a Stanley Cup ring.  He craves the cut—the slice and sting of pressurized carbon against his shoulder blade.  Jack wants the pain, more necessary than the kind he played through to get that last goal past the goalie to clinch a playoff spot, more exquisite than the agony of losing in the final round.

One full kiss and one little susurrance and Jack would stay.  He has a list of things that Bitty could say that would have him on his knees and he goes over it every night after they meet.  He replays their whispered conversations to make sure he hasn’t missed any cues, because there are some lines on his list that require response.

“I don’t care,” is up there along with “Now,” and “Fuck me,” and “Please, Jack,” but all of them fall below one.  It’s the one Jack plays over and over inside his head when he touches himself to the memory of Bitty’s voice.

“Let him hear.”

That’s all it would take for Jack to open the back gate and walk those 26 steps to bend Bitty over the picnic table.  That’s all it would take for Jack to bury himself in a fresh high, one that would feel as far from a fresh grave as he’s been since he was eighteen and panting his last breath against cold bathroom tile.  

That’s all it would take for Jack to stay.  

But if Jack stays, there’d be no steps left to count.  There’d be no miles left to run, no shallow breaths to swallow and Jack doesn’t know how to live like that.  Jack doesn’t know how to live without the clarity that comes from having an itch a quick hit can’t soften or blur.  

If he was allowed inside the gate, he’d never leave.  He’d ruin Bitty and Bitty would ruin him.  Their game would end with two losers who walked away from the board without putting away the pieces, and Jack can’t stand to lose, not to anyone, least of all to himself.

So he counts.


End file.
